So I (37F) and my boyfriend (38M) have a 1.5y son. I’m currently pregnant with #2. The rules from the jump after I had him were 1) no kissing the kid unless you’re Mom or Dad, 2) no showing up unannounced and 3) we won’t be having anyone babysitting until we’re (mainly me) comfortable with it. My MIL (65F) has disregarded all of these rules multiple times. We waited two weeks to have visitors after the birth, and even though we had said through text, in person, and in passing through other people that we didn’t want anyone kissing him, the minute she walked in the house, she blazed past me to my boyfriend who was holding him and planted one on him. I gave my boyfriend ‘the look’ and he said something to her. He actually, to his credit, has said something right in the moment every time it has happened. She didn’t do it every time, but more than five times, but it was over a year before I blew up when it happened at Christmas time and she kissed him on the mouth. I have distanced myself from her, and lowered contact because I feel every time I say something it goes in one ear and right out the other. This pregnancy, she has barely said anything to me. Maybe once a month, if that, I get a very bland text. I’m not a person who avoids conflict, nor am I shy about placing boundaries, but she is and so I think that’s added to the distance.
I thought it was important for extended family or friends to spend time with us as a unit, rather than babysit. I feel this allows everyone to get acclimated to how we are choosing to parent (completely different styles), and to get to know our kid, and for me mainly to see how they act as people. I had very few interactions with them before this, save for holidays or random drop-in’s with my boyfriend, so she and her husband are essentially still strangers to me. I have always been polite, I’ve invited her to come Christmas shopping and to lunch with just me. I’ve put in some effort. She never invites us anywhere or asks to come by and spend time with the kid if it means we’re all home. She only has offered to babysit so we can ‘get away’, but it’s never when we’ve actually needed it. And there have been more than a few occurrences, especially when my son was really small, where she said she would take my son home and we could have her dog. And I tried to politely decline and make a joke out of it, and she doubled down three more times that same instance, with me getting increasingly agitated with every mention of it. I didn’t find it funny, but I didn’t want to tell her to get the fuck out of here, out of respect for my boyfriend. I’ve been firm, but respectful. And she has watched him a few times, initiated by me.
Anyways, I am nearing my due date with number two and so I’m already feeling rather anxious as is… and I get a text this morning that says, “Good morning. Hope you have a great day. Give [my Son] a kiss from me.” To which I responded “Good morning, I hope you have a a great day too! I will give [my Son] a hug from you.” I then followed up with a text saying that “And we are implementing No kissing the new baby either. Just, No kissing the kids, thanks. Just so you know, that boundary stays!” … I keep thinking she is pushing boundaries… I want to know if I’m overreacting. We just clash on most things. I have more examples of other things, but it’s like she ignores me and the minute she contacts me, it’s to say something that she knows is bothersome to me so then I respond with something that reinforces her view that she is the victim and I am just the no-box.
For additional context, when my boyfriend and I first started dating, he started coming by to see them more than he had been, mainly because family is important to me, and both she and her husband kept asking me to get him to come around more, call more, etc. In the beginning, I thought she was texting/calling him and he just wasn’t responding, and I’ve since come to realize that neither one of them put in much, if any effort to communicate with him, they expect him to put in all the effort, and he has a low tolerance for things they say/do, hence the disconnect. So she was expecting me to make the effort between them. Once I realized, I stopped ‘nagging’ my boyfriend about it. Had I not put in the effort, she probably would never see her grandson either. But I do hear about how she ‘never sees him’. Anyways, I don’t know where I was going with that.
What would you do?
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